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Patience and maturity

Wimpie de Klerk — older brother of F.W. de Klerk, who would later become the last apartheid ZA prime minister — was by the standards of mainstream Afrikaner politics a racial liberal. Here’s how that sounds in December 1981:

Experience throughout the world shows that black groups have a thin skin in their attitude to whites, and the reverse is apparently often the case. We simply have to accept this element of mutual hatred…

We, the whites, will have to take a lead, and forget about demanding an eye for an eye on the score of hatred. We must exercise patience and maturity.

“Apparently” is my favorite part.

By the late 1980s, by the way, de Klerk, against his brother’s wishes, was participating in secret meetings with the ANC.